Santiago Road only had a few businesses on it. Most of the buildings were little office buildings, stories, or empty lots. David frowned. Why would they be here? Or maybe they weren’t here. They passed a lawn mower repair shop, a faded sign swinging slowly in the light breeze that only seemed to make the air even hotter.

“There’s no tadpole bike on the road,” Mari said.

“You think they’d give that to us?”

“Well, if they were considerate PIPs.”

“PIPs?”

“Persons-in-Black.” Mari looked up at him. “What? If it had been two guys, it would have been MIBs, and if it had been two girls, it would have been WIBs.”

David looked down at his friend. “While I was planning this out, you were thinking of what to call them?”

“No, I just came up with it now.” She skipped ahead of him, hands in her pockets.

David rolled his eyes as he followed Mari.

It didn’t take long to walk the length of the street. “Most of these places have been around forever,” David said, pointing to one plumbing supply store sign that proudly mentioned it had been established in 1986.

“They could have just bought an old business and used it as a front,” Mari said.

“But that would mean having to deal with the old customers.” David shook his head. “I can’t see a secret conspiracy liking that.”

“Yeah…” Mari nodded. “Besides, it’s not as if we can just walk into every place and ask: are you part of a secret conspiracy?”

“No,” David said. “But I don’t think we have to—” he gestured at one building, a three-story office structure. “Because that has something no other place on the block has.”

“What?” Mari asked.

“An enclosed garage.” David pointed to the structure next to the office building. “Looks like it was intended to be a repair garage or something. Easy enough for them to use.”

Mari stared at the building for a moment, then looked at all the other buildings they’d passed. “And since they’d want a place to stash their ride out of sight…”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” Mari said. “What do we do now?”

“I—” David reached out and pulled Mari back, behind the corner of a storage office. The doors on the attached garage were opening. Moments later, the tadpole zipped out onto the street and spun off, two figures visible in it. Seconds later, the vehicle had turned onto the cross street and had vanished.

This is stupid, David thought, even as he pulled Mari out onto the street, running across it. But the automatic garage doors were closing, closing slowly enough that they could get in.

“Come on!”

“David, what—” Mari didn’t say anything else, her shorter legs working to keep up with David’s long strides, as they managed to get into the brightly lit garage, just as the doors closed behind them.

David looked around. The garage was large, but… disappointingly mundane. There were racks of tools, and a pair of nondescript vans sat in their bays.

“Okay, we’re in,” David said.

“In? In!?” Mari stared up at him, her eyes wide. “We just broke into the place!”

“No, the door was—” Mari poked David in the chest.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it!” She looked around. “What if they have a camera? Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if the police call our parents?”

“No cameras,” David said. “And do you think the secret…whatever they are are going to call the cops?”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Mari asked. "That they might just haul us off to some secret base full of mad scientists!" She ran an agitated hand through her black hair.

“Well, it means you don’t have to worry about the police,” David replied. "Besides, I figure you'd like it, given your movie fetish."

Mari stared, then flapped her arms. “Next time, I’m coming up with the plan.”

“I thought you wanted to be in charge of coming up with WIBs, MIBs, and PIBs.”

Mari shook her head. “Okay, we’ve broken the law, and we’re in a… garage. Not really catching the secret organization vibe here. I mean, that wrench looks suspicious, but that could just be me being judgmental.”

“I doubt they have anything incriminating in their garage. Let’s look over there.” David gestured at the open door that led to the office building.

“What if there’s someone in here?”

“We only saw two people at the barn, two people left, and I don’t hear anyone else…” David grinned. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“Wondering how many years it’s going to be grounded for.” Mari put one hand over her eyes. “Okay, let’s go, but if we end up on board an alien spaceship getting probed, I told you so.”

“Right,” David said. “Now, let’s be quiet…”

----------------------------------------

The hallway was lit with all too normal LED lights, while the carpet reminded David of the anonymous carpet that the school office had. Maybe they all buy from the same place? David tried not to laugh at the image of his teachers rubbing shoulders with secret agents as they tried to get the best deals.

But more importantly, the place was quiet. Nobody was using a copier or talking. There was just the sound of the air conditioning.

And no cameras in the hallways.

“Okay,” David whispered. “Let’s go.”

“Right,” Mari said, pressing up behind him. “And let’s find an emergency exit in case they come back.”

“Right.”

The first couple of rooms were offices. Empty offices. Oh, they had computers and desks, but the computers had dust covers on, and the desks were empty of paper and pencils.

Are they planning to get more people in here, or did they just buy the first building they could get? David shook his head. The second story was the same.

“Okay, do they just hang out in the front office?” Mari asked.

“I don’t…” David looked into a conference room. The table was there, but no chairs. “Let’s go back downstairs. If there’s anything here, it’ll be down there.”

“Yeah.” Mari shook her head. “Are you getting nervous?”

“No…yeah.” David looked down at her. “Yeah.” Because this is way too empty. Creepy.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

On the first floor, David decided to actually look through every room. They checked the front, the tinted windows protecting them from being seen from the outside. David stared at what must have been the security guard's desk, a dozen monitors dark on it. First floor, second floor, garage…

“I thought there weren’t any cameras!” Mari said.

“There weren’t. Maybe they haven’t installed them yet.” David stared at the monitors. There was something… “Basement.” He said. “There are four monitors here for the basement, sections 1-4.”

“That’s a big basement.”

“And where do secret conspiracies hide?”

Mari stuck a finger in the air. “The basement!”

“Right, let’s go find it.”

It didn’t take long to find. The rear of the building had a door with BSMT ACCESS stenciled on its surface. There was an electronic lock, but all of its indicators were dark. David took a deep breath, and waiting for the wail of alarms, turned the knob.

Nothing. God, they must really have just moved in before everything was ready. If he’d waited another week…

The stairway was narrow, only a few lights illuminating the darkness. And it went down… down a lot further than David figured a basement would be. Mari pressed up against him as she kept trying to look in front and behind them. If someone opened the door up there or came up from below, they’d be trapped with no way to hide.

And then they came to the landing, an identical closed door in front of them.

“Well, we got lucky once…” David turned the knob.

No alarms. He pushed the door open and then stared at the room beyond. “You’ve gotta be kidding…”

The room in front of them looked like a cross between mission control at NASA and a mad scientist’s lab. There were computer cabinets on one side, looking like no model David had ever seen.

The other side had cylinders full of some twisting… violet substance. Below those cylinders, there were what looked like rows of sockets, some of them filled with the same little cylinders that the woman had used at the barn.

“Like the light at the barn,” Mari murmured.

“Yeah.” David looked around at the other devices, some looking familiar, some looking…

“What is that?” Mari asked, pointing at something sitting on a desk. David stared at it, then looked away. It was a bottle, but parts of it… weren’t there. Or they shouldn’t be there. But they were.

“This is…” David looked up at one of the cylinders. Mari was right. It was like the light from the barn. “Did they—were they responsible?”

“They didn’t sound like it,” Mari said. She pulled out her phone and started taking pictures.

David nodded and did the same. “Look for some documents, anything that we can…” He paused. “Why did you just take a picture of the trashcans?”

“Because I want to have visual proof that evil conspiracies also use the recycle cans,” Mari said primly. “And because…” she pulled the lid open. “People never think about what they put in the recycle, so we can look at this picture to make certain we put the can back the way it was. Nobody will ever know we were here.”

David didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay, that was really smart.”

“Of course it was, I thought of it!” Mari said, negligently waving one hand as she opened the lid and bent down to look into the can. “Someone really likes their caffeine fix and… here we are!” Mari pulled out a thick bundle of papers. “There were more in there, but they’re all shredded.”

David took some of the papers from here. “These are invoices. Cleaning stuff, snacks…” he frowned. “Nothing…”

“No invoices for secret agent kits?” Mari nodded. “Here’s… Oh wait.”

“What is it?”

Mari held up a sheet. “Look at the indentions—someone was writing on top of this…” She giggled. “Cool, I know what to do!” She flew over to a desk and pulled out a pencil. “Already sharpened, thank you, Mr. or Ms. Secret Agent…”

“Oh, oh.” David grinned. “That’s smart.”

Mari slowly started to lightly rub the pencil over the paper, and gradually the indentations become more clear, forming elegant handwriting.

“Okay…” David said. “Incident report, The Man With the Bags…”

“Yeah. So it’s about us. Breach detected at 0800, registered as a…” Mari frowned. “Can you make that out?”

“No. But that was really early, and people were wandering around the woods in the daytime…”

“Yep. So nothing looked weird…” Mari frowned as she stared at the rest of the writing. “Okay, nothing here… And… AE became realized due to psychological interaction with local mythology-tale?” She glanced up at David.

“Okay, so AE is…” David shrugged. “Something. It became realized…”

“Made real,” Mari said. “Because… Because the kids were thinking about the story? I mean, it’s a local myth, and they…”

“So, like a ghost?” David asked.

“A ghost that likes to play—” there was a banging sound in the distance. They both looked up.

“We need to go,” David said.

“Yeah,” Mari agreed. She dumped the rest of the papers into the recycle bin, and tucked the pencil and her rubbing into a pocket. “Let’s get out of here.”

We shouldn’t have spent so much time here… David shook his head. They should have just left…

But now they were moving and heading towards the door.

The door that flew open, revealing… A thing, all metal limbs, eight of them, with soulless lenses peering out of of an inhuman head. It was almost as big as David and it scuttled into the room, like a gigantic, mechanical spider.

That was when Mari shrieked like a banshee.

Right. She hates spiders.

----------------------------------------

Mari had never liked spiders. Everyone knew that, especially since her sixth-grade field summer camp trip when a bundle of daddy longlegs had fallen from the cabin’s ceiling directly onto her face.

It had taken the camp director nearly ten minutes to coax Mari back into the cabin. Only the fact that pajamas didn’t keep you very warm when it was snowing had convinced her to come back in at all, and she had kept her flashlight handy, checking the ceiling at odd intervals for the rest of the night.

And now, she was facing the mother of all spiders. A robot spider. A robot spider that was coming right for her! Mari shrieked and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, one of the high-quality flatscreen monitors. She pulled it free and threw it at the monster.

Which promptly reared back and caught it with its front two legs, before gently putting the screen onto the floor. Mari was scrambling back, and then David was in front of her, lifting up the recycle bin and throwing it. This time the spider had to use four of its legs and was pushed back, its hideous chittering filling the room.

“Run!” David shouted.

“It’s—it’s between us—”

“Out the other door!” David shouted.

Mari didn’t need to be told twice. She ran towards another door. Please be open, so the giant-spider-thing doesn’t eat me! Mari’s hands were sweaty as she grabbed the doorknob and twisted it. It slipped, once, then she gripped harder and it turned and pulled. The door opened. Another hallway. This one with boxes and dollies in it. They must be—

“MOVE!” David shouted. He pushed her forward and then turned and slammed the door shut. But it opened inwards, and the electronic lock was dark…

So they ran, and behind them, Mari heard the squeak of the door opening and turned around to catch a glimpse of hideous spidery limbs pulling it open, the hateful eyes of the monster staring at them.

“Monster!” she gasped. “They have a monster!”

“A robo—”

“I don’t care! It’s a spider-monster!” Mari shouted. She wasn't sobbing. Nope. She was shouting. The sound of its legs were getting closer. At the end of the hallway, she saw three doors. They’d only have a chance to try one…

“The one at the end!” David said. “Maybe it leads to another stairway!”

“R-right!” Mari said, her vision wavering. I am not crying, this is just sweat in my ears and it is a perfectly natural response to OhGod, a giant metal spider! She could hear her feet pounding on the tiled surface, feel her heart going a mile a minute in her chest, and then she was pulling the door open and they were tumbling into…

A broom closet.

Oh. Fuck.

----------------------------------------

David pushed the door closed, just as something hit it from the other side. Then he braced a dolly up against it, just under the doorknob. “That should hold it,” he said. The room’s LED lighting had come on as they had opened the door, but all it showed were racks of toilet paper and towels, some bottles of hand soap, and a very, very small vent.

Way too small for them.

“Wha—what do we do?” Mari had backed up until she was pushing against the far wall, staring at the door with wide, frightened eyes.

Mari really hated spiders.

“Okay,” David said. “Maybe it’ll go away…”

“And tell the people who own this place?” Mari said. She was breathing fast. “It was a robot! I’ve never seen a robot like that!”

“Okay…” David shook his head. “I know, alright!” Stupid, stupid, stupid… This had been his idea, and now he was going to get Mari arrested—or worse. Maybe if he told everyone that it was his idea and he’d lied to her.

Presuming the people here were willing to even let them go. Nobody knew they were here, after all.

David took a deep breath and pulled out his phone.

“David, what are you doing?”

“Calling 911,” David said.

“But they’ll—”

“That’s better than getting killed by a robot or disappeared—c’mon, c’mon…” The screen blinked, the little notification at the corner giving the symbol for no signal. David raised the phone towards the vent. Nothing.

“Fuck!” he said. Mari had her own phone out, but when she looked up at him, she shook her head.

“Okay, maybe we can…” David looked over and grabbed a broom, the thick wooden handle heavy in his hands. He knocked the broom’s head off and nodded. “Look, I’ll go after it, and then you run. When you get to the street, just call the cops.”

“That thing would kill you!”

“What, no faith?” David said and really hated the way his voice quavered. The ends of the robot’s feet had gleamed like they were sharp. “Look, we don’t have much of a choice, so we need to—” He fell silent. The sound of the skittering legs had ended.

Now, they heard the sound of footsteps. Very calm, measured footsteps.

“Just so you know, kids, the normal way you apply for a job is via the front door.” The voice was muffled by the door, but Mari still recognized it.

Mari looked up at David. “That’s…”

“The woman,” David said.

“Also, you probably shouldn’t keep hiding in the broom closet. Makes a bad impression, you know.”

David looked at Mari. She was calming down, even if she still looked pale. “We can’t just run,” Mari said. “I bet she’s controlling that… thing.”

“Right. No running…” David said. “Fine!” he called. “We’re coming out.” He took a deep breath and grabbed Mari’s hand. He could feel the way she was trembling. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Mari said. "Let's do it."